Introsume
by Iori-chan-sempai
Summary: One-sided Jin x Ragna. So much hate for the ones we love. Tell me 'we both matter'. ...don't we?


"Nii-san, why couldn't you love me?"

His voice is somber and calm, far different from how enraged he had felt at the height of battle, when he had asked the question earlier. Ragna hadn't answered him then, and his lips don't begin to move this time either. Jin isn't surprised.

He looks into Ragna's eyes and sees how hard and unfocused they are-- as though glaring through him, which Jin decides will not do at all. Settling on his knees, he makes sure to be directly in Ragna's line of sight, and is pleased that he does not look away.

"You loved me, I suppose," Jin admits after a moment, his hand straying to grasp at the fabric at Ragna's wrist. "But it was never enough. You were supposed to be mine, Nii-san, not," he pauses, then scowls as he says it, "_ours_." He runs finger down Ragna's cheek, laughing softly, when Ragna doesn't flinch at the motion. "You know... I was never sad that Mom and Dad died. I was only angry at them. Saya was the apple of their eye, wasn't she? Dad had always wanted a daughter to spoil, and Mom always needed something to occupy herself. They were a happy family, and we were left over. I liked things that way."

"When they died, Saya had to find someone else to cling to, to take care of her. You." He scoffs as he remembers Saya's blushing face, her utter neediness, his voice dripping with disgust. "I hated her. You thought that I was just giving her a hard time, but I hated her. She was so fragile and sickly, of course you had to look after her. More than me," he quickly retracts his hand, as though he had been burned.

His eyes grow hard and he's shouting now, before he even realizes it, "Even though, even though I had been by your side, since I could walk! I was there for so much longer than her, you see? I was always looking at you, Nii-san!" Jin gasps, catching his breath, trying hard to rebury the emotion welling up in him, emotion he had locked away for far too long. "I was _always looking_," he says, and his eyes start to burn, "and you never noticed."

Jin swears he sees a new flare in Ragna's eyes at that, and is suddenly gripped by a new fear. Indignation and loathing take root in seconds, coloring his words with accusation. "Or did you notice? Did you just pretend not to see it, to make yourself feel better? To deny that it was your fault?!" His nails are digging into his palms; the material of his gloves save him from the tiny cuts, but does nothing for the bruises that he know will appear within hours.

"You knew! And yet, you didn't..." Jin hardly notices how cold the air around him turns. "Why?! Because we were, brothers? And that wasn't morally _righteous_?" He shakes his head, "You were never something so little as my brother. You were everything to me." Murmuring softly, he slowly sinks to the floor, "Whenever Saya got sick, it was like the whole world turned against me."

His fingers are tight in the red of Ragna's coat, and Jin talks into his side. "You ignored me, Nii-san. You made me feel like I was nothing. The only way I could feel like I was something again was for Saya to be out of the picture. I tried to get rid of her, more than you ever realized. It was funny," he says without laughing, "Saya was always so weak and frail, but even when I switched prescriptions and labels, or forced odd pills down her throat, she wouldn't die. She was resilient. Things had been that way for the better part of a year, when it happened."

He smiles, "And it worked, Nii-san. I finally killed her."

But his victory is tainted once he thinks about girl he had met in school.

When he starts to laugh, its a twisted broken thing, too loud and too unhappy to be called a laugh, one could argue. "Even though she died-- and she was dead, damn it-- I am still haunted by her." He stared at his once white glove, still dyed with Noel Vermillion's blood. "How many times will I have to kill her memory? Until I stop thinking about it? Until you do?"

Ragna is silent. Jin thinks it's a good sign, a sign that he has decided to stop rejecting him, and instead, listen and accept. Jin wraps his arms around Ragna's waist and is silent along with him, for a long time, until he is roused by a loud and equally turbulent rumbling.

Jin doesn't let himself wonder what the sound could be and says, "Hey, Nii-san?" He doesn't continue until he's sure he has Ragna's attention, "Are still you mad at me?"

Before Ragna is given a chance to speak, however, they are interrupted by a loud crash--the door to the Cauldron falling off of its hinges. "Ne, Ragna, I've been looking for you, you know," a girlish voice calls out.

Its familiarity tenses the muscles in Jin's jaw, making him withdraw from Ragna's side to grip Yukianesa tightly in his right hand. The android comes into the room, hovering, her feet forever an inch above the floor as she draws closer. Once she spots them she halts, as though surprised, if a monster could feel such things.

Her voice becomes hollow and robotic in an instant. "Scanning... scanning. Target has no vital signs. Target has been... erased."

Jin can't hold back the victorious laughter in his throat as he pulls Ragna into his lap. "He isn't erased," he says simply, comforted by the fading warmth of the body against him, almost enough to forget that voice, and that face, "he's finally become mine." He smiles, and presses a kiss-- their first and last-- against Ragna's mouth, letting his lips be stained with spots of still-wet blood.

Jin cradles his brother in his arms and waits for the world to end.


End file.
